Saturday, 6:30 AM
The air was suffocating.
Wretched screams echoed from every direction. Shadowy hands soared out of the darkness, clawing at him, trying to pull him under. He ran, or tried to—his limbs felt heavy, as if weighed down by invisible chains. They caught his legs. His heart pounded like a war drum as he struggled forward, more hands creeping up his body, cold and relentless.
He was being dragged into the shadows.
Then he heard it again.
That voice.
A raspy, broken whisper—his own voice, but not quite—echoing through the dreamscape.
| "Wake up."
The phrase repeated again and again, until a chorus of haunting voices joined in. Just before he was swallowed whole by the sea of grasping hands, Kaleem jolted awake, drenched in sweat, breath ragged and desperate.
These dreams had haunted him for three days now.
Each one more vivid. Each one more terrifying.
Each one more… real.
He sat up slowly, blinking against the soft gray morning light that filtered through his curtains. The dream still clung to him like damp fog, a heaviness pressing against his chest.
As he swung his legs off the bed and tried to stand, a sudden jolt of pain shot through his skull.
"Ughh!!" he groaned, clutching his head as agony lanced through him like a spike of ice.
His body convulsed slightly. Veins bulged across his temple. A strange, low-frequency ringing buzzed in his ears, like a swarm of invisible insects crawling behind his eyes.
For three full minutes, the pain refused to subside—but he didn't faint. The nightmares had tempered him, trained his mind to resist collapse. The first night, he had screamed. The second, wept. But by the third, he endured.
When the pain finally receded, a new flood came: memories.
> "Kaleem…"
> "Happy birthday, Kal!"
> "I like you…"
> "Hey! Somebody help me!!"
Disjointed voices and images tore through his mind. Faces he didn't know. Places he'd never seen. Emotions that didn't feel like his own. All of it pushed into him like puzzle pieces from a different life being forced into place.
He sat there for a long while, silent, breathing heavily, staring blankly at the floor.
Then, softly:
"So I really am a victim of circumstance…" Kaleem muttered, exhausted.
From the fragments embedded in his brain, he pieced together the truth: the voice that has been waking up was the remnant soul of another Kaleem that had come from another world—Earth. His former previous life, he had been a very simple person, a nobody, a pushover. A poor geek who liked comics, games, and stories about reincarnation and transmigration. Stories that now felt like cruel irony.
Because this wasn't fiction.
He hadn't replaced someone. He hadn't stolen another's body. This body was always his.
Only now, it was no longer alone.
He had fought something that defied reason, something that clawed a hole through the veil of reality. And in doing so… his other self had awoken or should have.
Whatever the truth was, it wasn't just that he had survived.
He had been changed.
His eyes drifted to the alarm clock.
> 6:47 AM.
He rose on trembling legs and went to the bathroom to splash cold water on his face. The mirror stared back, reflecting not a monster, not a doppelgänger—just him. But still, he averted his gaze. The mirror had been… strange, lately.
There were times his reflection seemed to twitch when he didn't.
---
**Saturday, 7:10 AM**
The air outside was cool and damp, scented faintly with dew and fading rain.
Kaleem walked out onto the quiet street, earbuds in, hoodie up. His breath fogged the air. Birds chirped lazily in the trees, and a few joggers passed by, giving polite nods.
And the **entities** were there again.
Floating in the air, barely visible, were those same translucent shapes—indescribable, pulsating things that vibrated with wrongness. Some hovered quietly like jellyfish in the sky. Others stalked the edges of his vision, their forms shifting whenever he tried to look at them directly.
They had no eyes, no faces, but he knew—he knew—they were watching him.
He tried to ignore them, as always.
They hadn't attacked. They hadn't spoken.
Yet.
He turned the corner, heading toward the alley.
The place where he first had contact with that thing..
The street had returned to normal. No black blood. No strange stains. The hand he remembered had disintegrated into mist. But even in daylight, the shadows clung to that alley like soot.
He stood before it and stared for a while.
"Come to think of it… were those things ghosts?" he murmured, unsure whether he meant the abomination or the watchers.
He didn't linger.
---
**Saturday, 7:30 AM**
Kaleem returned from his jog, legs slightly sore, but his mind clearer.
"Maybe I should use knowledge from my past life to make some money…"
Then he remembered:
"Ah… right. My past life? Just a broke nerd hehe."
He chuckled, the sound hollow.
A breeze passed. A whisper rode the wind—indistinct and low. He paused.
Across the street, a man stood at a bus stop, staring directly at him. Not like a glance. Not passing curiosity. Staring.
Kaleem frowned and looked away.
Tap.
He flinched.
A tap—on his shoulder.
He spun around.
Nothing.
No one behind him.
His skin crawled. A primal instinct told him to move. He didn't look back again.
He rushed back to his house, entered and locked the door behind him. Breathing hard, he leaned against it.
"Calm down," he whispered. "You're just paranoid. Sleep-deprived. Traumatized."
And then he felt something in his pocket.
He reached in and pulled out a card.
He hadn't put anything there.
It was dark gray, matte, almost metallic in texture.
On one side:
> Silver Cresh
Beneath that, a number. No address. No website.
On the reverse side, written in silver ink:
> "To step into mystery is to resonate, transform, and ascend.
> "To follow the Silver Cresh is to bow to the moon and be born into a new world."
As his eyes traced the inscription, something **opened** behind them.
A sudden stillness.
The air vanished from the room. The world became a cold, endless void.
And behind the veil of his mind, he saw it.
A silver moon, huge and cracked, hanging above an ocean of writhing ink. Tentacles reached out from the sea. The moon wept silver tears.
And then a whisper entered his skull.
"We see you."
His vision exploded into stars.
His knees buckled.
The card slipped from his fingers.
And he collapsed